For thousands of years, farm animals were raised out-of-doors, seasonally, in an open field. Recently, however, due to the cost of land, the enlightened farmer and advanced technology in equipment and foods, the raising of animals has been brought indoors and is a year-round activity.
A major problem in raising animals indoors is one of sanitation, in that tons of manure are excreted by a single animal during its short life span. Another problem is providing climate comfort to the animals during both the winter and summer seasons.
The development of flooring systems for indoor shelters has progressed steadily over the past few years from concrete flooring, to concrete slotted flooring, to steel slat flooring, to aluminum slat flooring, and then to plastic slat flooring. All these prior floorings have advantages and disadvantages with respect to the sanitation and the heating and cooling problems. Concrete chips and corrodes and is difficult to keep clean; steel and aluminum are great heat conductors and are either hot or cold depending on the ambient temperature of the air of the shelter.
An object of the present invention is to improve the floor of a shelter by providing better materials of construction and to provide a better assemblage of slats and easier installation and maintenance of the flooring.
Another object of the invention is to provide simple but novel heating and cooling of the flooring.
A further object of this invention is to provide a pair of segmented manifolds to selectively enclose and direct heating and cooling fluid through the flooring.